


Twm Siôn Cati and the Ceffyl Dŵr

by Jay Tryfanstone (tryfanstone)



Category: HUGHES Lynn - Works, Hawkmoor (1978), Hawkmoor - Lynn Hughes
Genre: M/M, Seventeenth Century, Wales, Water Horse, Welsh Myths and Legends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-01-04
Packaged: 2018-09-14 13:20:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9183433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tryfanstone/pseuds/Jay%20Tryfanstone
Summary: Twm Sion Cati was the Robin Hood of Wales, a shadowy figure best remembered for his poetry, his wit, and his extravagent, well-organised crimes. In later years, though, he became respectable, marrying and becoming a magistrate.Nominally respectable.





	

  
_"Robberies and affrays, routs and riots, feuds, murders, comorthas, organised raids on towns, cattle stealing, kidnapping, attacks on merchants were common-place occurrences, I regret to say, even in Caernarvonshire, but Cardiganshire was worse."_

Professor W. O. Williams _Some Notes on Tudor Cardiganshire_ (1969) 

 

He was twenty-nine in the spring of 1559, six months married, a free man, landed. It was not so inconsequential. His name was Thomas Jones, but in his own mother-tongue, the language of bards, he was Twm Siôn Cati, Thomas son of Catherine. A bastard, an outlaw, a thief. 

"A farmer," said Rhys. He grinned sideways under the rim of the ale-cup. "Leaves us open to every travelling salesman and jobbing priest between here and Bangor. _Duw_! And here was I thinking ours was a bond never to be sundered."

"That was before you poached my salmon," Twm said. 

"And you with such a lack of them," Rhys mourned. "Two tiding rivers and five trout streams, and me with an ailing wife and six mouths to feed."

"And the jobbing priest," Twm said.

"How could I forget." Rhys scowled into his barley beer. The salmon was a known quantity. The priest was not. 

"God's due," said Lewys. "Catholic or Protestant, a babe still needs blessed."

"Never felt the loss myself," said Twm, who had once been excommunicated at the pulpit _in absentia_ , although under a different name.

"By an Englishman?" Rhys said. "An Englishman in my house?"

It was unanswerable. Twm, taking the better course, ordered another jug. 

"And she said," Rhys carried on, swept between expostulations by a current of beer and company. "She said, Rhys, husband, if one more mouth at the table leaves you this crabbed, best you take up continence. Continence! I ask you. I am not," he said with some force, as if anyone present would challenge the issue, "a _continent_ man."

"Well, to be fair," said Twm, who had his own ideas about balancing accounts.

"Did I get her a feather bed to be thrown out of it?" Rhys asked. "I did not." 

"I thought it was Twm got the feather bed," said Lewys.

"Aye, and the wife to go in it," said Morgan.

"Figure of speech," said Twm, who had indeed received with his wife not one but two feather beds. All the better to pleasure you in, he'd whispered to Johane, smiling. His wedding day had been all golds, sunrise, sunset, the gowns and rings and goblets between. What came after - his wife was a scholar, a lady, and could not therefore be held to any other measure. "Rhys it was took Vicar Davyd's four poster. Dropped it off the end of the cart at the turnpike, quick as you please."

"They could hear her in Llanberis," said Margaret, reaching for the empty jug. "Mrs. Morgan Davyd." Her cotton petticoat curled at the edges of her bodice, warm and white, and the round of her breast above it was as warmly brown as a hen's egg. She had freckles.

Twm sighed soundlessly, a married man, and did not look away.

"Oh, Morgan, Morgan!" Margaret moaned, theatrical, jug clasped to her bosom. "The old besom." 

"Ah, darling, say that again," said Lewys, grinning. "With my name between your teeth."

"Get on with you," said Margaret fondly.

She ruffled his hair before she swept off to provide four helpings of rabbit stew and accompanying ale for a party of miners from Powys, and Lewys' eyes followed her across the room, lingering on the stack of packs and pickaxes by the fire.

"No," said Twm. "I'm respectable now."

~*~

Every heather root carried its own sparkling dew drops, and the mist was milky with sunlight, on the verge of clearing. Above the Tregoran road, Twm shifted uncomfortably in his damp breeches and felt every sharp-edged stone an incipient bruise. Rhys, in leather trews, had the shadow of a grin at the corner of his mouth. "Feeling the cold, m'lud?" he said.

"Rhys, my dove, I'll thank you to hold your peace," Twm hissed. 

"Whist, you filthy scoundrel," Rhys said, "If you wanted to play thief all on your lonesome, you could have said so."

Twm scowled, but failed, a remarkable occurrence, to produce a counter-argument. 

Rhy's eyes were narrow at the edges, still amused. "That magistrate's wig you're wearing too tight for you, Twm, _bach_? Looks like it's rubbing at the edges, can see your balding pate clear as glass."

"As if you can talk," Twm said, wincing, but consoling himself with the observation that Rhy's locks were decidedly thinner than his own. A houseful of children would do that to a man. Not that he'd ever know.

"And two minutes ago you were telling me to hold my tongue," Rhys said. 

He knocked his shoulder companionably against Twm's, and they fell into silence, quiet enough that the small creatures of the hill took heart and set about their own business undisturbed. At length, the clatter of metal sounded from behind the rise. Thick with the morning after, men's voices echoed through the last of the mist. 

"Have a care, he said, to the Tregaron road. But who can tell what road is what in these godforsaken hills? Lakes, he said. What lakes?"

"Could be walking through one for all we know. Dammed clouds."

Metal clanked. Their footsteps were heavy, laden. Twm had his head cocked on one side, sharp-eyed, sharp-eared. Four of them, the four that had been at the inn, dragging their pickaxes and hammers up the mountain. Miners always thought ponies were for farmers. Wouldn't catch him with a shovel over his shoulder, coal-black, dust grimed into the soles of his boots and the lines of the palms of his hands, never seeing daylight. 

Pointed as a hunting dog Rhys was tense from his toes to the tips of his ears. Twm had the charm. Rhys had the pistols, just in case.

"It's all very well the old priest saying the workings were up on the hill, the whole place is nothing but hills."

"Stumble round here long enough, we'll find it."

They had flat, English voices, harsh as corncrakes. A stone, sprung, rattled down the hill. 

"Gentleman," Twm said. He was standing up. He doffed his hat. It was not his best hat, but it was still possessed of a sweep of feathers long enough to brush the heather. "Good morrow. Might I be of assistance?"

All four of them jerked to a stop, squat little marionettes weighed down with iron. 

"It's the squire from the inn," one hissed.

"Thomas Jones," Twm said, obliging, in his best accent, the one he used for his father-in-law. "I've land down in the valley. It's not often I'd be on this track, though, and seldom I'd find another soul up here. Did you mis-step your way?" He was close enough to see the sturdy canvas packs they wore, blankets and food and cooking pans as well as shovels. One of the miners was younger, little more than a boy, dark-eyed, with curls. English, though. The rest were in their middle years and showing it, one with a tawny cap, one with a chain to his fob-pocket and the cloth flat under it, one with the kind of flat, red-flushed face Twm always associated with the old Sheriff, Stedman.

"Don't trust anyone," tawny cap hissed.

"You're not wrong there," said Twm. "Equal as houses, you'll not be finding yourselves, neither. If you were looking for the Tregaron road, you're a rough few miles astray."

"How did you know that?" snapped the biggest of the men, the one with the red face. 

Twm shrugged. "Tregaron or Shrewsbury," he said. "And none of you with the look of a monk about you." And thank god for it, he thought, considering the thick black hair springing from his scalp and comparing it to Rhy's thinning pate. Rhys was talking about shaving it all off, naked as a baby bird, and knowing Rhys probably would. 

"Fair enough," said the gentleman with the fob chain. "It was the Tregaron road we were looking for."

"You're four miles out," Twm said. "There's a switchback just up from the inn, easy enough to miss. From here, might as well take the shortcut over the moor. It'll catch you up just past Glenfawr."

"That's too far," said the gentleman with the tawny cap. "We're looking for the lakes."

Clearly, Twm thought, regarding their mattocks and shovels, out for an afternoon dip. "Which one?" he asked. "The one with the water-lilies? The one named for the Lady?"

"What? There's a few?"

"Sure there is," said Twm. "It's all bogland up there. ceffyl dwr country. The waterhorse," he added politely, in English.

"Keffle Drue?" said the red-faced man. "A what?"

"A waterhorse," said Twm. "Black. Mane all strung with weed, dripping, Teeth. Drags you right back down into the water."

They shifted uneasily. 

"Never move far from their own lakes," Twm reassured. 

"But which lake?" said the red-faced man. "Which one? What if it's the one we're looking for? I say we show him the map."

"Davy, no," said the gentleman with the fob chain. "You know we're supposed to keep-"

"A map?" Twm said brightly. "Set your packs down, let's have a look. We'll have you set right as fast as horse can run. Don't you worry, boys."

~*~

"I was thinking they'd never take fright," Rhys was shaking his head. His hair was soaking wet, sleek over the crown of his head, his eyelashes clumped. Water dripped from the end of his nose. He looked, in the shaded light of the dark lantern, like one of the sea folk, a seal wearing its human skin, a stranger.

Twm's heart felt hollow, a bell tower without the bell in it. He took a step back, his knees suddenly weak underneath him. 

"Then they ran like mice," Rhys said, with satisfaction. He was smiling, grinning, his familiar broad white-toothed grin, sudden as the flash of a salmon's belly. Under him, the hill pony stood soaked and miserable, water trickling down every leg to puddle around its hooves. Lewys' wife's grass-green petticoat was braided, in shreds, to its mane and tail. 

"Englishmen," Twm said. His knees were braced. His heart beat, steady as it always had.

From over the hill, Lewys cried out, harsh and wavering, the sound an unholy medley of a white owl's screech and a donkey's bray. Stones were still rattling, from where the miners had run straight down the Tregaron road to the safety of the village. It was near enough full dark, but the lanterns were lit in the valley, and they'd follow the light down the hill safe enough. Twm, clearly, was becoming responsible in his old age.

"Well," he said to Rhys, "Looks like we've got ourselves a gold mine."

The old despot, the Vicar Morgan Davyd, had, it turned out, more than one reason to cling to the barren Welsh hills and bogland he so despised. It was he who had commissioned the map and recruited the miners, provided samples and funds. His greasy, grasping fingerprints patterned the entire plan, from the spidery directions on the map to the thin blankets to the tasteless pottage the miners had been eating. Even the tools the miners left behind were the cheapest the Vicar could have provided, all ill-bound iron and splintered handles. Hands blistering, Twm and Rhys picked away at the leading, grumbling, while half the village trekked up to the crags to laugh and point. Lewys sent up the pot-boy every couple of days with food, Johane rode up once or twice a week to bring Twm fruit from the garden and fresh bread, and Rhys' boys visited every few days with clean shirts. Even Twm's father-in-law, Sir John Price, arrived one afternoon with his daughter, to poke around the shales of the mine with more excitement than Twm had ever seen from the old scholar before. "If I were a younger man," he mourned.

"Sir, you'd be more than welcome," said Rhys.

Twm stood on his foot, hard, but Sir John was already shaking his head. "Oh, no," he said. "Not with these old bones. But seeing you young lads with such an adventure warms my heart. A gold mine! As good as any sea voyage." He tapped doubtfully at the rock. "Sediments," he muttered. "Erosion. Alchemy..."

"Papa," Johane said. "It's getting late."

"Run along, then," Sir John said. "Let me have a word with young Twm, here."

"Sir?" Johane said. 

"It's all right," said Twm. "I'll see him safely down, you know I will."

"Look after him?" Johane asked.

"Of course." Twm held the mare steady for her as she sprung into the saddle. "Make sure David filters the beer. After the saint's day, not a hour sooner! And don't write too late, it's bad for your eyes."

"Twm," she sighed, and bent down to kiss him, affectionate and smiling. 

She'd been married too young, the first time, to a man far too old for her. Twm smiled back, and set the horse on its way with a slap. Rhys, on the other side of the dark entrance that led into the mine, had politely turned his head away, but Twm could see his shoulders, held very still. A couple of the boys from the village cheered, faintly, as Johane cantered over the rise, her green mantle and her long red hair flying behind her. She was brilliant, his wife, beautiful and kind and clever, a man would have to be a fool to hurt a hair on her head, and Twm was luckier than he deserved that he was the man she chose.

"She's a good girl," Sir John said, squinting after her.

"Sir, I know it," Twm said. 

"Flighty, though," Sir John sighed. "Her mother died early, and then - well, I have never met a woman so at home in a book. How was I to take that away from her?"

"You should not," Twm said, bristling. He liked, _arglwydd mawr_ , his scholarly wife. 

"But what would she do when I died?" Sir John said. He glanced at Rhys, who had reached for his pocket-book and a twist of leather and was sitting with his face turned away, innocent as a choirboy. "Send her to a nunnery?" He tutted. 

There were no more nunneries.

"A hard choice," Twm sympathised.

"Well, I though Tom would look after her. An older man. Steadying," Sir John said. 

Johane's first husband had been twice her age. Had died hard, shot by the sheriff's son, in same conflict that had taken Twm's friend Shanco. A bloody mess. Twm shivered to think of it.

"Her mother died in childbed," Sir John said. "And she my only child. I did not want - she was never a girl for babies. But I think she made the right choice herself," Sir John said.

"Sir," Twm said.

"When I die," Sir John said, "I will go easy, knowing my Johane is in your hands. And I know - men will be men," he said, looking straight at Twm. "But I do not think there will be any bastards of your get."

Twm was a bastard himself. He knew, only too well, the sideways glares of the villagers and his mother's silent pain. He nodded.

"Then all is well," Sir John said. He heaved himself back onto his pony, waving away Twm's hand. "And that was a fine set of verses you gave us, last Lammas tide," he said. "The structure of the rhyme...you must come and stay, when this adventure is over, and explain it to me. Bring Johane. Bring that black Welshman, if you must." He nodded at Rhys, who had been in and out of Twm's kitchen, Twm knew, as if it were his own. "Good luck with the gold. Farewell!"

"A good thing it is," said Rhys, shadowed on the other side of the fire, "If a man gets on with his wife's father."

"He is a clever man," Twm said. "But not wise. Ah, Rhys, put another log on before you fillet that rabbit, it's cold tonight."

He was shivering. Sir John, he thought, was a lonely man, his daughter married and only the books in his library to keep him warm at night. Johane would be lost without her pen, and her pillows and cushions and her cream mare and her besotted little lap-dogs. And Twm without Rhys or Lewys or Will or his mother, even with the gaping wound that was Shanco's death, Twm without his friends would be just another melancholy Welshman... The fire was down to embers, the moon above already over the crags, and they had roasted and eaten the rabbit. Rhys was rolling out the blankets, close together.

Sleep did not come. Even when Rhys had grunted and rolled over and settled them together against the cold, sleep did not come. He had run through the night, once, with the dogs behind him and Rhys a dead weight on his shoulders, Rhys beaten and bloodied and with a bullet-hole through his shoulder a week untended. Stedman's men would have hung him if Twm hadn't cut the rope, only just in time, and even then he'd feared that the man he carried would be dead, if only he had courage to check. But Rhys had lived. He was alive, and warm. 

" _Duw_ ," Rhys said. "Snuggle up any more, and I'd begin to think the good lord should have put a bolster between us."

Twm had his nose buried in Rhys' shoulder, and his hand over Rhys' heart, the steady beat of it under their shared blankets. He wasn't sure how it happened.

"Doesn't count if it's not in a bed," Twm muttered.

"Say that again when she's as round as a barrel and the priest's knocking on your door," Rhys said. "I'm not one of your hiring fair girls, Twm Siôn Cati. Buy me a ring before you go delving under the blankets." His voice was a warm, familiar rumble. 

"Didn't think you were that particular, Rhys Thomas," Twm said. It was not true. Fourteen years wed, six children, and Rhys had always been faithful to his wife. Loved her, Twm knew, kept his drinking outside the threshold and his hands to himself, never owned a dog because Henrietta was terrified of the barking, sent the children to school and himself to the workshop every day he could. 

"All cats are grey in the dark," Rhys said. 

He reached, Twm thought, for an affectionate cuff to the head, but his fingers hesitated, tugged at Twm's hair and settled over the nape of his neck, where the noose would have lain if the old Sheriff had got his way, before the pardon came through and Twm was suddenly a landed man, a magistrate, a farmer, a husband, respectable as a parson. Dry as one, all the sweet promise of his marriage bed foresworn. 

He ran his hand under Rhys' shirt, and twiddled his fingers in the strong, coarse hairs of his belly. Last time they'd done this, Rhys was still sleek as a girl, Twm as slender. When they were boys.

"You know what you're doing?" Rhys asked, steady, although his breath had hitched.

Twm reached lower, and closed his hand around the springing shaft between Rhys' bog-oak thighs. "Yes," he said, and pulled Rhys' head down to his.

The night was kind, cloaking the moon in cloud. In her bed at her own house of Ystradffin, Johane rested free and content in her embroidered sheets, and the geese were quiet at Banc Cottage, where Rhys' wife Harietta slept as deep as coal. But on the hill, Twm Siôn Cati, who had found the feather bed too soft for his liking, and his man Rhys Thomas, whose first and deepest loyalty was always to his liege-lord, did not sleep at all.

~*~

As for lovers everywhere, morning came too soon.

"Twm, _bach_ , get your filthy hands off me," Rhys muttered. 

Cruelly early, sunrise was greeted with unfeeling enthusiasm by the nesting songbirds of the hillside. Twm groaned, burying his head in the warmth of Rhys' shoulder. Rhys had broad shoulders, more suited to a smith than a saddler. He was as broad as a churchyard yew tree, Rhys, a barn door of a man. He smelt of leather, and sweat, and their mingled seed. 

"That's not what you were saying last night, _cariad_ ," Twm said, into Rhys' skin. 

Obliging, Rhys shivered, "Last night was last night," he said. 

"Aye, and?" Twm said. 

Rhys sighed, gusty. "Twm..."

"She won't," Twm said, plain and clear. He rolled to his back and scrubbed at his eyes. "She is a scholar, a writer, a poet. Not a wife. When we married....there will be no children, Rhys. Not ever." He glanced over. Rhys was staring back at him, eyes wide. "I've no mind to tumble the maids in my own house. You heard me promise as much, to her father. She deserves more from me than that."

"I don't know whether I should commiserate or bloody your nose," Rhys said, very dry. 

"Ah, no," Twm said. "Rhys. Rhys..." He stalled. If Rhys was a woman, he'd know exactly what to say, how to cosset and cajole, silver-tongued, sweet in the sheets. Rhys was Rhys, solid and hairy and honest when it counted and inexpressively dear. He'd taken Twm apart last night, methodical and devastating. He hadn't known... Twm had thought it would be easy, swift, a friendly hand on his cock the same as when they'd been boys fumbling in the dark. But Rhys was - Rhys had, and Twm had -

"You're blushing," Rhys said.

"I am not," said Twm. He touched the heat of his cheek with his fingers, aghast. 

"Try writing me that dreck you call poetry and I'll deck you one," Rhys said. "But I'm your man, Twm Siôn Cati, in this and in everything else. You know it." 

Twm tried to smile, and found he could not. He was, _Duw Mawr_ , tearing up. His throat felt like he was swallowing slate. Bereft of words, he nodded.

"Well, _bach_ , that is settled," said Rhys. He stretched, comfortable in the tumbled blankets, his arms tanned to the elbow, his shoulders and chest milk-white. His grin was a flash of teeth, armed and dangerous. "You can gift me your salmon," he said, "for my bridal morning."

"I will not," Twm said.

"I'll take them anyway," said Rhys. He cuffed Twm over the head. "Get up," he said. "You stink. I'll race you to the lake." He was standing up, letting the blanket fall. "Not a word to my wife, I'll not have her upset, if I'm in her bed or no."

"Never," Twm promised. He scrabbled for his boots. They were both stark naked, the cold morning air raising goose-bumps on Twm's thighs and shriveling his private parts. God in heaven, he swore, shivering. Rhys had taken their bundled clothes. Twm's doublet flew from his shoulders, cheerfully scarlet over the white flash of his buttocks as he ran, picking his way bare-footed through the heather towards the lake. He was a good man, Rhys Thomas. A better companion could not be found in all Cardiganshire. All of Wales. Flopped into the water like a beached whale, though, Twm thought, picking his way through the heather towards the lake. 

The rockslide started just as Twm was soaping his toes. It was a clatter of small rocks at the top of the crags, to start with, loosened by the rain, disturbed by water streaming off the plateau beyond. The small rocks cracked and scattered, tumbling down the slope, impacting their bigger brethren, gathering speed, crashing and tumbling, until it seemed half the slope was in motion. The rumble of it was a monster, growling through the soil, crashing through scree and heather, felt as much in the belly as the ears. 

" _Diawl!_ " Rhys swore, heartfelt. He was clutching his shirt, eyes fixed on the collapsing struts of their leading. Rock spattered over the dark cave of the entrance, and then crashed down in a great, dusty wave of stone, covering their campsite, their mine, their blankets and food, the grassy patch where, if Rhys was not a god-fearing and cleanly Welshman, they would have been sleeping.

"Indeed," Twm said. He put the soap down, gently, on the rock where he perched. "Rhys, _bach_ ," he said. "I'll thank you for bringing our clothes."

"But not my boots," Rhys said. 

The dust was settling. The slope quietened, stray pebbles still shifting among the rubble. A block of shale had rolled nearly to the lakeside. 

"Well," Twm said. "I think we're done mining."

Rhys was dressing himself, in haste. "My boots," he said. "That was a Spanish hide. Never saw the like. Thick as my thumb." 

"We'll have a funeral," Twm said. "Empty coffin. I'm sure the priest will say a few words." He felt giddy with relief, light-headed with it. That could have been himself and Rhys, under the stone.

"Have a thought," Rhys said. He sent off back up the heather slope, wincing.

"Ah, _duw_ ," Twm sighed, and followed.

He caught up with Rhys on the edge of the fall, binding his feet with strips of his waistcoat. Rhys was always a handy man to have around the place, patient with animals and small children, good on a horse, good with a bow, a good man to have at your back. Very different from Johane, with her books and her papers and her harp, all words and flowers, clever as a bard, although Rhys had a good line in filthy doggerel with a cup or two inside him. They'd like each other, Twm thought. In his mind's eye, he put them both in the same house and himself creeping from bed to bed....

"No luck?" Twm said.

"No," Rhys said, short.

Twm had found the shovel and was poking at the rubble. Under it, somewhere, was his favourite cap and Rhy's boots and four abandoned packs and one treasure map. He shoved at the loose shale, sending it rattling down the hillside, and watched it fall towards the little lake where they'd bathed. The water lilies were in full bloom now, spreading across the still, dark water, flowers opening in the morning sunlight, pale and spiked among the round, paddling leaves. 

The rock fall was a full twenty paces across, ragged and unstable. The leadings were completely hidden, lost under six feet of broken-edged stone, together with the miner's abandoned packs and their tools, the soundings he and Rhys had dug, the blankets they'd slept in last night and the flask of ale Lewys had sent up with the boy, yesterday. It felt to Twm as if what he and Rhys had done, last night, had been wiped away as cleanly as the mine, as if it had never happened. He and Rhys could walk away from the hills as if they'd never touched each other, which would be the action of good men momentarily led astray, men with wives and children, a business and a magistrate's hat and two reputations to sustain....

He was surprised by the depth of his own anger. Seized by the teeth of it, shaking, because he wanted Rhys, and goddamnit, they might have said the words, but he wanted the world to know. Rhys was Twm's, always had been, right from when they were godless scraps of boy tickling trout and stealing apples and mocking the poor, patient monks. And now he'd had Rhys, held him down and rutted against him and marked him, with Rhys as mad for it as Twm was - that choked-off curse and the way his hands clenched in Twm's hair - but Twm knew well enough there was never going to be _before God_ rings or golden sunsets in their future. He hefted the shovel, swung it at the rock, hard, the shovel juddering in his hands and ringing with every strike, and again, and again, taking his frustration out on the rock. Harder. Harder, rock skittering and smashing, sharp-edged, struck into crazed disorder, until the shovel handle snapped in his hands and he was left holding the splintered remnants. 

" _Duw_ ," said Rhys mildly. "My best shovel. Now look what you've done."

"Hold up," said Twm. Under the rubble, something gleamed, gold.

~*~

"Pyrite," said Sir John. He tugged his spectacles off his nose, Venetian glass, valuable as a bishop's chasuble. "Iron pyrite."

"What?" said Rhys, explosive.

"You might know it as Fool's Gold," said Sir John. He tilted the rock into firelight, gleaming sparks of light. "Not, I am afraid, worth more than its own weight in curiosity."

"Ah, _duw_ ," said Twm. "And there was I thinking we could put a new roof on the cowshed, this winter."

"Not with this," Sir John said. "But it would ill behove me to let my daughter's cows stand in the cold." He smiled, and tossed Twm the sample. "Keep it. Start a collection, if you've a mind. But for now, another glass of that excellent spirit, if you would, one for all of us, and a tune, I think. Johane?"

Smiling, Johane ran her fingers up the keyboard of her mother's spinet. "A new song," she said.

It was one of Twm's. He sat back, rueful. The firelight flickered over Johane's face, absorbed, and Rhys, bundled _crinkum crankum_ into his new trews, and Sir John, eyes closed, fingers tapping gently at his waistcoat. Later, there would, he knew, be a dissection of metre and a justification of stress and syllables, and Rhys would grumble and work away at the saddle of Johane's mare, the one in scarlet Spanish leather, and there would be more honey beer and some of those sweet little figgy cakes...

Johane struck a last, ringing arpeggio from the spinet. Rhys said, "Well played, sweetheart," and reached for his needle, and Twm could not believe his own luck.

**Author's Note:**

>   
>   
>  I've never actually seem the TV series. There's an eight-minute clip, I think, on Youtube. But I have read and loved the book of the TV series, Lynn Hughes' _Hawkmoor_ , which went into the same genre for me as _Eagle of the Ninth_ and Henry Trease's _Micklegard_ series, glorious adventures in which the primary relationship was between a man and his best friend. I've been meaning to write this for a while.


End file.
